Spending Money : Shopping

The British are not very adventurous shoppers. They like reliability and buy brand-new goods wherever possible , preferably with the price clearly marked ( they are not very keen on haggling over prices ). It is therefore not surprising that a very high proportion of the country’s shops are branches of chain stores.

Sometimes the British go to the market in search of bargains. The market is large ; part of it’s covered , house-hold goods , fruit and vegetables are on sale and prices are often lower than in the ordinary shops. It’s very important for the housewives fighting a losing battle against inflation , the prices are rising constantly.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money , you should watch newspaper ads for sales. You may go to different kinds of sales : semi-annual and annual sales , one-day sales , half-price sales , warehouses sales and many others.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century supermarkets have been moving out of town , where there is lots of free parking space. As they do so , they are becoming bigger and turning into “ hyper-market “ stocking a wide selection of everything , from shoe polish to new laid eggs. So , one should be careful not to buy things , you don’t need or can’t really afford.

The area in town where the local shops are concentrated is known as the High Street ( the American equivalent is “ Main Street “ ). British high streets have suffered from the move towards out-of town shopping. In the worst-affected towns , as many as a quarter of the shops in the high street are vacant. But high streets have often survived by adapting. In larger towns , shops have tended to become either more specialized or to sell especially cheap goods ( for people who are too poor to own a car and drive out of town ). Many have become charity shops ( selling second-hand items and staffed by volunteers ) and discount stores. Many of the central streets are now reserved for pedestrians, so that they are more pleasant to be in.

Even most small high streets still manage to have at least one representative of the various kinds of conventional food shop ( such as butcher’s, grocer’s , fishmonger , greengrocer,s ), which do well by selling more expensive luxury items. ( Although the middle classes use them , supermarkets have never been regarded as “ smart “ or fashionable places in which to shop)

The survival of the high streets has been helped by the fact that department stores have been comparatively slow to move out of town. Almost every large town or suburb has at least one of these. They are usually not chain stores and each company runs a maximum of a few branches in the same region.

1. What dual attitude to shopping can we speak about?

2. Can we think of shopping for provision in terms of pleasure?

3. Are the British considered to be adventures shoppers?

4. Where should you go for bargains in Britain?

5. Where are the supermarkets and local shops generally concentrated?

6) What’s the reason for the survival of high streets in Britain?